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Marjorie describes Kahlin Compound in stark terms.

"It wasn't very good in those days. We had hardly any food or anything, never had any toys to play with. Nothing. We just used to play around and fight each other and go on with life."

"It was just a home, we weren't allowed outside. There was a playground a few yards from the home, and it was all fenced around. We had a little shed and toilet. They left us there to play around. We used to make a hole in the fence and crawl out and go out and get some mangoes. There were mango trees all around us. We started eating them because we never had much food in the home. The matron's husband caught us getting those mangoes, and told us to go home. We had all the mangoes tucked in our bloomers! When we got home, they said, "Take all those mangoes out!". Then he started whacking us with a strap that wide. We were on the ground, kicking and screaming."

Marjorie recalls, "It was terrible for us kids."

The children were known by numbers, rather than names in the home.

"My number was 38. When they didn't know our second name, they gave you a name from your country. That's why they called me Marjorie Daly, after the Daly River, where I was born."

Marjorie only did schooling up to year three, and then she was sent out to work as a domestic servant.

But she doesn't remember being paid. "They said they were putting the money in a trust fund, but I never saw a penny of it! I don't know what happened to it."

Marjorie stayed at Kahlin until she was married at the age of 16. "When they saw me with a white man, they said, "You either marry that lady or go to jail for six months!" We lived in Darwin for awhile and then when the war broke out, we shifted."

It was not until Marjorie was married that she reunited with her mother, an extremely emotional experience.

"I had never seen her until my brother said to me when I was married, "Let's go and see our mother". She was hiding at Humpty Doo in the bush. I started to cry, because I didn't know I had a mother. We never talked about our mother when we were in the home."